This blog has been designed to give the teachers and employees of the Hillsborough County School District an outlet to vent, rant, and most importantly share information and suggestions about Superintendent Elia's plan to increase the number of teaching periods from 5 to 6 periods a day while reducing the planning periods from 2 to 1.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

GET THIS SHIRT - YOU WEAR IT WELL

For all I bring to the classroom day after day this taps into my gut feelings. It says it all. Maybe we could use this design and post signs in the median of ALL highways leading INTO Florida and ALL roads leading OUT of airports. It's a sentiment that crosses political boundaries and philosophies.

If you commplain about the state legislature restructuring teacher evaluations, them HCTA must shoulder the blame, too. HCTA signed on with the Gates grant last year. So much for a supportive "union." Cancel your union dues. Have you ever seen union membership numbers or union officials salaries? Someone needs to post these numbers. Save your T-shirt money.

Taxpayers in Florida contribute 2.37 percent of the state spending toward public employee pensions. The national average is 2.92 percent. The statement that public employees in Florida do not contribute to their retirement, or that Florida is the only state where public employees do not contribute to their retirement is a complete distortion of the truth. Unfortunately, it has been repeated so often that even those who made it up believe it. There are 80,000 units of government in the United States that have public pension plans and Florida is one of them. Florida is unique only in its inclusion of so many public employees in one system. Over half of the teachers, or other public employees, in the United States do not contribute to Social Security, but they do contribute to their public pension plans. In Florida public employees, most of which are not state employees, contribute to Social Security but not to FRS. FRS became non-contributory in 1974 to stop refunds to non-vested.All FRS public employees in Florida do contribute to their own retirement through some combination of 403(b)'s, 457's, and Social Security. The statement by the Florida Chamber of Commerce and others that public employees in Florida do not contribute to their retirement is a complete and total falsehood. Furthermore, in the private sector, employer's match 401(k) contributions of their employees, whereas, public employees contributions to 403(b)'s are not matched.In 1974 FRS became a non-contributory system because of the enormous cost of refunding contributions of employees who did not stay employed long enough to become vested. The proposed legislation will return us to the system that existed prior to 1974 which was deemed at the time to be fiscally unsound.The proposals before the legislature will reduce the spendable income of 655,000 workers in the state of Florida. This will take between $1 and $1.5 billion out of the economy of Florida each year going forward. Does this sound like something we should do to help with our economic recovery?

Across the state, police, firefighters, and teachers are pulling their money out of banks that sit on the board of directors for the state Chamber of Commerce. That would be BofA, Wachovia, and Suntrust. They are depositing their money into community banks and credit UNIONS. Spread that word and love around. We are not thugs. ********************************The five hundred pound gorilla in the room is going to pounce when the government employees cut back on spending. They say it will save 4.3 billion in taxes. It will also cut 4.3 billion out of the economy. People can't spend what is nit there. This will negatively impact small business. Cause it will be cheaper at Target and Wal-Mart. That means less state sales tax which means more unbalanced budgets.